Above the Rain
A Novel
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The past, present, and future collide on a breathtaking journey from 1950s Morocco to modern-day Spain and Sweden—equal parts literary novel, historical fiction, and crime story
“In Del Árbol’s noir-inflected masterpiece, the past is always present, the political is always personal, and love, however fleeting, is the only redeeming grace. I loved every moment of it.” —Halley Sutton, author of The Lady Upstairs
Miguel and Helena meet at a nursing home in Tarifa, a coastal town at the southernmost tip of Spain. At an age when they believe their life is behind them and distanced from their children, they feel they are no longer needed. The sudden suicide of one of the other residents opens their eyes. They don’t want to spend their last days longing for supposedly better times, so together they decide to undertake the journey of their lives and confront the darkness in their pasts.
Meanwhile, in the distant Swedish city of Malmö, the young Yasmina, a child of Moroccan immigrants who dreams of being a singer, lives trapped between her authoritarian grandfather and her contemptuous mother, who is ashamed of Yasmina because she works for a Swede with a murky reputation. And she’s having a secret affair with the Deputy Commissioner of the Swedish police, an older, influential man.
As Yasmina is drawn deeper into Malmö’s criminal underworld and Miguel and Helena approach the end of their feverish road trip, Víctor del Árbol masterfully reconstructs the history of violence that links their seemingly disparate lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This overly ambitious novel from del Árbol (Breathing Through the Wound) alternates between multiple characters in Spain and Sweden. In a retirement home in Tarifa, Spain, Miguel, who's showing signs of dementia and has painful memories of the Franco era, has befriended Helena, an Englishwoman with her own fraught past. In an effort to escape the weight of their respective personal histories, the pair set out on a road trip that will take them to Sweden, where Helena's son lives. Meanwhile, in Malmö, Sweden, Yasmina, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants, is having an affair with a police officer and is at odds with her authoritarian grandfather. Eventually, Yasmina's story intersects with that of Miguel and Helena, with tragic results. Detailed backstories—even of minor characters like a Russian thug—slow the pace. Assured prose ("Memories were like termites, eating away at the present, boring holes in it and making it weak") makes up only in part for the cumbersome plot. This is more a meditation on family, circumstance, and violence, both political and personal, than it is a crime novel.
